As the Central government urged telecom service providers to urgently curb spam calls and messages, Gopal Vittal, Managing Director and CEO of Airtel, announced on Wednesday that the company has launched an AI-powered spam detection solution. This tool will alert customers in real time about potential spam calls and messages.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has directed telecom operators to eliminate spam communications and adhere to regulations concerning the whitelisting of URLs, APKs, and OTT links.
Speaking to IANS, Vittal explained that the AI tool can effectively identify 99.5 percent of spam messages and 97 percent of spam calls. The solution will be available to users starting Thursday.
“Airtel has been working on this AI model for about a year. Users will receive alerts with information about suspected spam during a call, reducing the risk of fraud. Currently, we are detecting 97 percent of spam calls, and we aim to cover the remaining three percent soon,” Vittal said.
– Advertisement –
This service will be offered to all users free of charge, with no need to download any additional application.
The system operates with dual-layer protection, comprising filters at both the network and IT systems levels. Every call and SMS is scanned by this dual-layer AI shield.
“In just two milliseconds, our solution processes 1.5 billion messages and 2.5 billion calls daily, equivalent to processing 1 trillion records in real time using AI,” Vittal added.
The AI tool has already successfully flagged 100 million potential spam calls and 3 million spam SMSs each day. Developed in-house by Airtel’s team of data scientists, the AI-driven solution uses a proprietary algorithm to classify and detect “Suspected SPAM” communications.